“It will involve causing a serious amount of grief for Goliath,” I said, “not to mention humiliation and a potential hundred million-pound loss.”
“Ah!” said Phoebe in a happier tone. “I’m in.”
I told her where to position herself, but after that there was little to do except wait, so once I’d checked that Gavin and Tuesday were working on Uc— they were, I was relieved to find—I made myself a coffee out of habit, then realized I couldn’t drink it, so I smelled it instead. I was amused, in an abstract kind of way, to discover that I could not tell only which country the coffee came from but also the probable region and year of cultivation. I then tuned the wireless to Toad-AM and listened to Lydia Startright’s live broadcast from just outside the Smite Zone. Little seemed to have changed— Lupton Cornball of Goliath came on air to reiterate the lie that the murderers were all willing adherents to their own destruction—and after that I listened to a spokesperson for the GSD, who confirmed that Joffy would indeed be in the cathedral at the Time of Smite and that a last-minute reprieve of the smiting had been turned down due to issues regarding infallibility.
I paced around the kitchen for the next hour and a half, interrupted variously by either Millon, who was still cramming for his hermiting certificate and who wanted testing on logical positivism, or the Wingco, who despite Tuesday’s expectations had been receiving sporadic images all morning from the Dark Reading Matter through Daphne the dodo’s buffer, which was still transmitting sporadically.
I told him I had a moment, so he showed Landen and me the images that had been sent back. The pictures were again fuzzy and indistinct and difficult to interpret. I could see what I thought were mountains and streams and clouds and a unicorn or two, then explosions and large tracked vehicles.
“Do those look like battle tanks to you?” said Landen.
“I’ve been watching glimpses of conflict all morning,” replied the Wingco. “Things don’t look good in there.”
“Can we get another dodo inside to see some more?”
“Interesting point. I spoke to the Swindon Dodo Fanciers Club, who tell me that pre-V2 dodos have almost four times the sensory bit rate and a larger buffer. If we could get a Version Two or lower in there, we might get some better images—and sound.”
“You wouldn’t get a Version Two in any condition these days for less than half a million,” I replied, a comment that reflected the greatly increasing value of early home-builds.
“It was just an idea,” replied the Wingco, “but a sound one. I would even volunteer to take it myself.”
“How would you enter the DRM?” I asked.
He gave a few instances of how it might be done, and I froze as a sudden thought struck me. Jack Schitt’s inexplicable behavior of late—in having an assistant destroy the pages with the lost works of Homer written beneath the later, crappier works— might not be so inexplicable after all, and it might just explain why the pro-literature Krantz was so willing to help us by supplying Day Players on a regular basis.
“By the Gods,” I murmured. “I think I know what Jack Schitt and Goliath are up to.”
The Wingco and Landen looked at me.
“Krantz worked for decades on the Book Project at Goliath, and it was his love of literature and the written word that set him on his self-destructive course.”
“I hope you’re not going to do one of those bullshit ‘I’ll tell you more when I know for sure’ deals,” said Landen. “That could be a serious annoyance.”
“Not at all,” I replied. “As the Wingco will tell you, travel to the Dark Reading Matter is a one-way journey. You can never get back. Unless you have one of these.” I pointed to myself.
“A left breast?” said Landen.
“No, clot, a Day Player. What I’m walking around in here might have been designed to be a twenty-four-hour disposable office worker or soldier, but it’s also the perfect way of getting into the Dark Reading Matter.”
I paused for a moment, waiting for this to filter in.
“Nope,” said Landen, “not getting this at all.”
“Okay, let’s start with his apparent escape from the Lobsterhood. He didn’t fast descend to escape and he didn’t BASE jump. He read his way into the lost work on the palimpsest. He then had his confederate destroy the pages. It was the only copy, so, once destroyed, the now-deleted work entered the Dark Reading Matter, with Jack in it.”
They stood and stared at me in silence.
“Jack could read himself into a book?” said Landen. “I thought that was something only you could do?”
“A Day Player can do almost anything. I’d say we were almost designed to be able to cross the transfictional border. Jack could stay for as long as his Day Player holds out, then die or be killed—and come straight back out of the DRM and into the RealWorld, memories and consciousness intact.”
“I think you might be right,” said Landen. “But why Krantz?” “He spent fifteen years on the Book Project ostensibly because he loved literature. I guess he didn’t want to see mankind’s lost works defiled and exploited.”
There was a long pause while we all thought about what this might mean. The Wingco broke the silence.
“What are they up to in there?”
“I’m only guessing here,” I said, “but past experience might indicate there is a seriously large pot of cash involved. They’ve probably been infiltrating the BookWorld for months. All those tanks we saw could well be Goliath—attempting to subjugate the Dark Reading Matter. I’ll find out more the next time I meet Jack Schitt.”
“I need to report this to Commander Bradshaw,” said the Wingco. “We may have to start sending troops in on a one-way journey. I don’t think it’ll be considered a suicide mission any longer—just a permanent reassignment.”
“And I’ve got to go,” I said, glancing at the clock. “Joffy told me I should be ready and waiting at Chiseldon from eleven.”
Landen asked me if I was going to be okay, which seemed a bit daft, to be honest. The only thing to fear was the failure of my set task—the good thing about being a Day Player was that death was downgraded from a vexatious lack of existence to merely a temporary inconvenience.
“If the worst comes to the worst,” I said, “you’ll know about it, because I’ll be yelling for a cup of tea from the guest room.”
I kissed Landen, checked that both my pistols were fully loaded and took spare clips from the gun safe, slipped a dagger into my sock and then popped my head around the door of Tuesday’s lab. To my silent question, she simply shook her head, and once back in the kitchen I asked Friday if I could borrow the Sportina.
“Why?”
“It’s the closest thing we have to a tank, and I could really do with one of those right now.”
“Game on, Mum,” he said, tossing me the keys.
“Thanks—and don’t do any murdering until I get back. Promise?”
“Promise.”
37.
Friday: The Righteous Man
The size of the righteous-person sector within the population is difficult to estimate, but calculations extrapolated from charity work, donations and the Samaritan Index might indicate an occurrence of about 11 per 100,000 population. Of these, perhaps only 2 percent might be considered truly righteous, wholly selfless and without a shred of sin—a total of about 100 people living in England today. Who they might be, it is difficult to say. They don’t advertise the fact.
James Hidden, The Good Amongst Us
As I headed toward Chiseldon, I could see that the hillsides surrounding Swindon were filled with spectators, eager to see the smiting firsthand, as no broadcast images could ever do justice to the terrifying beauty of a pillar of fire descending from on high. Many people had tried to describe it adequately, but usually without success. My favorite description was this: “The sort of spectacle that married the bold elegance of a solar eclipse with the visceral thrills of bare-knuckle croquet.”
Chiseldon is a small
village on the Swindon-Marlborough Road comprising a few houses, a gas station, a shop, and a railway station. There had been a basic-training camp for Crimean conscripts nearby, to which I had myself been assigned before moving to the plain for vehicle training. The camp reverted to farmland once the conflict had ended, but the iron gates were still present, along with a large bronze statue of Colonel “Trigger” Dellalio, now covered with ivy and graffiti.
I stopped at the deserted gas station and climbed out of the car to have a look around. I walked to the road and glanced up and down the dead-straight highway. There was traffic, but it was all heading into town, presumably latecomers wanting to indulge in what had been sniffily dubbed “Smite tourism.” Even though there was an hour to go, the clouds had begun to heap high above the Swindon Financial Center. The Smite Solutions “honeypot” of hardened criminals would theoretically attract the pillar of fire as it descended in a sinuous curve, similar to the twisting nature of a waterspout.
I checked my watch again and nodded to Phoebe, who was parked in the entranceway to the abandoned Chiseldon camp three hundred yards off. The clock ticked by until it was eleven, then eleven-fifteen. The traffic died down, as presumably everyone was in place to watch the spectacle, and even the staff in the gas station closed up the shop to go watch. Within a few minutes, I was completely alone.
As I stood there, I noticed a large Pontiac driving along the road in a slower-than-normal fashion. It pulled in to the gas station’s forecourt and stopped, just the other side of the pumps. I walked cautiously toward it and soon noticed that the engine was still running and that the windows were tinted.
I knocked on the window. After a pause the window wound down. There was a tanned man with a military-style haircut sitting in the driving seat, and through the window there came the faint waft of gun oil, coffee and body odor. There were four of them. They were armed, and they were bored.
“Yes?” said the driver.
“You know who I am and why I’m here,” I said softly, “and I want you to turn the car around and leave.”
He looked at me curiously and gave a slight smile. “And why would I do something like that?”
“Because I don’t want to kill you, and you don’t want to be dead.”
The smile dropped from his face.
“I don’t respond well to threats,” he said. “There are four of us, Miss Next. How many of us do you think you can take down before you’re dead?”
I stared at him, then at his front-seat passenger, who had his hand beneath a newspaper on his lap, presumably hiding a weapon of some sort.
“I can take two of you down for certain, three possibly. But it needn’t come to that. You’re not Goliath. You’re mercenaries. So aside from the cash, you’ve got no real reason to show any loyalty.”
“We think a lot of you, Miss Next,” replied the driver, “and we don’t actually want to hurt anyone. It’s messy, the paperwork is a headache and the lawsuits frequent, and the clients don’t like it. Our instructions are clear: Hold the righteous man in custody until after midday. But if anyone stands in our way, we are required to take whatever action is deemed appropriate. Do I make myself clear?”
“Perfectly. Now just go home and we’ll forget this ever happened.”
He shook his head, and I heard two faint clicks from the backseat as safeties were released.
“We can’t do that. We have reputations to consider. Do you know how oversubscribed the menacing business is these days? Gigs are hard to come by, and one failure can lose you clients as easy as blinking and, what’s worse, slash the daily rate in half.”
And that was when I heard a mild squeak on the adjacent railway line. It was a faint noise but one that unmistakably heralded an approaching train from the south at a distance of five hundred yards. I could sense the speed it was going, too, and given that it was slowing at a progressive rate, my Day Player mind calculated I had a little over thirty-one seconds to get rid of these idiots before the 11:36 from Marlborough pulled into Chiseldon station. The righteous man was arriving by train. “Reputation, huh?” I said. “Ever heard of the Special Library Services?”
They had. Everyone had. Ex-SLS could get a job in security anywhere in the world. Half of President-for-Life Vera Lynn’s bodyguard had been SLS at one time. The driver looked momentarily worried, and there were some mumblings between the two in the backseat.
“The SLS has no interest in righteous men,” said the driver, “or people like you.”
“Wrong,” I said. “I’m the chief librarian of Wessex. The SLS cares very much what happens to me, and right now you’re surrounded by a half dozen SLS. Make a wrong move and you’ll have more holes in you than a lump of Emmentaler.” The driver and the front-seat passenger looked around. They couldn’t see the SLS, of course, for the simple reason that they weren’t there. I wasn’t here on library business and had no right to ask the SLS to risk their lives. It rattled the mercenaries in the car, though.
“Bullshit,” said the driver at last.
“Okay,” I said. “Watch.”
I pointed at one of the many lamp standards that were dotted around the periphery of the forecourt. I had to just hope that Phoebe had seen the car pull in and had positioned herself well.
She had. The lamp fitting on the standard exploded into fragments from a carefully placed shot. I’d told her to bring a sniper rifle.
“So,” I said as the train heaved into sight along the tracks, “you’re going to leave now, aren’t you?”
The driver didn’t answer and instead drove out of the forecourt a lot faster than he’d come in and was soon lost to view. I gave a cheery wave to wherever Phoebe might have been hidden, then walked across to the station and pushed open the gate to the platform.
The train pulled in, paused briefly, then pulled away again. I thought for a moment that I had been mistaken, as no one had alighted, but as the carriages moved out, they revealed a middleaged man standing on the platform opposite the single-track line. He had a beard, a kindly face and was wearing a brown suit and carrying a small suitcase.
“Hello,” he called across cheerily. “You must be Joffy’s sister.”
“Thursday,” I said, and beckoned him to the crossing point so I could take his case and escort him to the car. I learned that his name was Tim and that he had managed to fit this job in only because there had been a late cancellation.
“All requests are treated equally,” he explained. “No one person is more important than another. What’s the job?”
“See that?” I said, pointing to the sky, where the clouds were swirling in a circular pattern above the city. “There’s going to be a smiting, and a group of sinful men have been gathered in order to attract the pillar of fire away from the town.”
“There must be a lot of them,” he said, being something of an expert. “That’s almost four miles off.”
“Twenty convicts, I believe.”
“Poor things,” he said. “They must be terribly frightened.”
“I don’t think they know anything about it. All we need is to place you near them to shift the smiting back to the city.”
“No problemo,” replied Tim cheerfully. “Goodness! A Sportina. I haven’t ridden in one of these for years.”
I started the engine and took the back road to Wroughton Airfield. The time was 11:42, and the sky darkened as a circular void began to open in the center of the swirling mass. There’d be some hail most likely, then a ripple of thunder.
We sped along the back roads to avoid Wroughton town, and although I was a Day Player and more able to think clearly under stress, I could feel my heart beat faster and an odd sense of nervousness that was positioned not in my stomach but wholly in the mind. I was driving faster than was necessary in the narrow lanes while at the same time keeping a careful lookout for the distinctive glint of a rifle barrel. We were vulnerable in the open countryside, and I’d be a fool to think that the mercenaries were the only people employed to stop
me. The righteous man, for his part, just chatted amiably about things in general. If he felt any danger, he didn’t show it.
I looked in the rearview mirror for perhaps the umpteenth time and noted with relief that Phoebe’s red Mini was now behind us at a distance of perhaps two hundred yards. The relief was short-lived, however, as a car pulled out of a side road and blocked her way. I put my foot down, and we picked up more speed, then turned a corner—to be greeted by the sight of two cars parked end to end, blocking the road. Since the smiting was intended to be here, there was an exclusion zone around the airfield. Smite Solutions might not care two hoots about the sinful, but they certainly cared about civilian collateral damage—it would be bad for business.
I didn’t pause nor lift my foot off the throttle, and we thumped our way through the roadblock, sending the two cars flying into the ditch. This was the reason I’d brought the Sportina, after all. We carried on, this time with cars in pursuit and with the harsh ring of bullet hits striking—but not puncturing— the heavy steel of the Sportina. The manufacturers of the car had worked not only to a longevity criterion but to a military one—all Griffin motorcars could withstand a standard-velocity round from fifty yards.
“Should we stop and see what they want?” asked the righteous man. “Those gentlemen seem very upset about something.”
“They’ve been paid money to kill us,” I said, negotiating a tight corner. “I don’t think talking is high on their agenda—or skill base.”
“Oh, dear,” said the righteous man, “how frightfully disagreeable. But I forgive them. Probably the result of an unhappy childhood.”
The cars behind had been gaining on us, then abruptly stopped as we passed a pole with an amber flag attached to it. I wasn’t sure why this was so until we passed a red flag a few hundred yards on, and the reason they’d stopped became apparent. We were now in the Smite Zone of complete destruction, and there was less then thirteen minutes to go. As far as any of the guards were concerned, we were dead meat, and they were, too, if they followed us in. I didn’t stop, took a left through a gate, bumped across a field and then found a particularly dilapidated section of the perimeter fence and drove through it, the broken wire clawing long scratches in the car’s finish.